Welcome to a space for the spirituality of gay and bisexual men. We have within ourselves the resources for our healing, liberation, and growth. Connecting with each other, we encounter the grace to lay hold of a richer, juicier life. Losing ourselves in deep play, we rediscover the bigger, freer, more joyous selves we're capable of becoming. Here I share my interest in personal and communal ritual, making art that expresses my inner life, and an intentional practice of erotic spirituality.

Monday, October 10, 2011

Lying Fallow

I've been thinking a lot about compost lately.

My neighbors and I have a new bin on order. It puzzles me how little attention composting gets in a village where what you throw out, you carry to the dump yourself. We're aiming for smaller, less smelly, and less frequent loads. And for the alchemy by which the remains of last night's meal, and last season's growth, become the matrix of new life: of worms, insects, and microbes converting nutrients; of next year's foliage and fruit nourished on the rich black leavings of that slow, dark process.

This isn't my first foray into the romance of garbage. Toronto, where I live when I'm not on an oversized spit of land jutting into the North Atlantic, is light years ahead of most American cities on matters of urban ecology and provides free bins to anyone who wants them. The compost pile's been a fixture of daily life there for years. But this is the first time I've identified so strongly with what goes into the bins.

I love seasons of growth: the burgeoning of spring, the green riot of summer; in my own life, the new adventure, the momentum of intentions coming to fruition; insights consolidated, awareness heightened, my sense of connection to the Sacred sure and full of energy, my love and compassion for those around me flowing easily out of the Love and Compassion I experience poured out upon me from that Presence.

Seasons when nothing seems to be happening next, I'm not so good at. After a summer of growth and discovery and fulfillment, I spent most of September describing myself as "needing to find traction."

Now it's beginning to dawn on me that the lesson that's staring me in the face isn't to be learned by getting the wheels to turn, but by looking down at what lies on the ground--a season's fallen foliage, awaiting slow transformation.

The outdoor altar I've tended the last year and a half goes on teaching me. Divided into upper and lower levels, it betrays its origins as a long-disused brick barbecue. Above, it's open to the light, facing south and warmed by the midday sun, a few tiny plants inexplicably rooted in the crumbling mortar. Below, a dark recess belongs not to the well-lit clarity above, but to the ants that have colonized the chinks and to sowbugs milling beneath the detritus that shelters them.

The upper platform is now cleared, since Equinox, of many of the objects that had been part of my morning and evening practice--but the floor of its lower chamber remains layered with leaves and withered blossoms from summer's prayers and offerings. Gently turning these remnants of a season of my life now past, I find the bottommost stratum of rich, moist decay and carefully restore an alarmed earthworm to the safety of the dark. Praying as my hands make contact with the unseen workings of God's dark, fallow fecundity, I reach toward the lesson I need to learn now.

2 comments:

the lesson of composting (yes, I do) and Fall for me, is that there is no such thing as death but rather each thing, including "me", is a temporary transient arrangement of energy and mass that with a turn of the kaleidoscope's cylinder rearranges into a new configuration just as wonderful and unique and as evanescent as the one before and, in turn, the cylinder will turn again and again displaying a dazzling infinite array: and to know that "I" have been momentarily part of this glorious cyclic recycling humbles, enlivens and en-joys me

David - thanks for awakening my muse as light begins to transform darkness, into shadow, into defined shape before I leave for the quotidian treadmill, TaN

High Summer

About Me

I’m a gay man committed to gay and bisexual men in our journey toward a bigger, freer, more joyful life. I’ve had long experience of the roadblocks that get thrown up along our path. I’ve had long experience of joy and pride in finding a way around them. I feel abiding gratitude, because I know I haven’t found my way around them on my own.
My experience tells me we’re all happiest when we live our lives with gratitude. And real gratitude, in turn, expresses itself in a passionate desire to give back.
My background includes degrees in religious studies, languages, and literature; over twenty-five years as a teacher; time spent at monasteries and retreat centers; a long creative practice in the visual and literary arts; a love of play and experimentation; an abiding fascination with how ritual works in various world cultures and religious traditions. I've served numerous times as an assistant at workshops and intensives offered by the Body Electric School and have taken its training as a Sacred Intimate.

Breathe

Connect

Go Within

Image by Stevee Postman: www.stevee.com

Contact Me

It's part of my calling to offer myself to you as a companion in creating and sustaining a ritual practice--here through your comments on this blog; by private communication; or by meeting face to face. I'm also deeply privileged to do the work of a Sacred Intimate.

Down to the River

The Heart Leaps Up

Photo Content

Photos without attribution are either my own or are of unknown source. If you are the owner of any image reproduced here that you wish me to remove, please notify me and I will do so immediately.

Reunion

Visitors to Anchorhold

The Soul Upon the Skin

Photo by Dave Dietz; painting by Larson Rose; by permission of the canvas. (For Larson's reflections on his practice, see the Ritual Resources page above.)

Canvas and Artist

Lion of Judah

Finding Yourself, Claiming Yourself

I invite you to celebrate who you are, and who you want to become.

Think of the times your life as a gay or bisexual man has flowed without effort.

Think of the times you’ve struggled to lay hold of your life more fully.

Maybe those times feel like opposites. But they’re parts of a single cycle: sowing and harvest, labor and rest, preparation and enjoyment. We can’t work toward a fuller life unless we already feel some trust that life will rise up to meet us. We can’t sink deeper into our present joy and satisfaction in life without being reminded that it took a long journey to get here.

Please join me in considering a place where the two halves of this cycle come together: in the safe, empowering container of ritual space and ritual time.

Pride in Milan

Photo by Giovanni dall'Orto

Pride in Tel Aviv

Let Me In--Young Gay Kiss

Photo by James Wielson

Jacob's Night Visitor

What's an Anchorhold?

For centuries in Europe, a handful of men and women took a vow to devote themselves to the cultivation of their inner lives and to make themselves radically available to their communities for spiritual counsel. Committing themselves to remaining in a single dwelling for the rest of their lives, they were known as anchorites; the houses in which they lived were their anchorholds. Those who needed what the official channels of the religious establishment couldn’t provide came to the anchorhold for conversation and support.

Neither priests nor monks, the spiritual practice of anchorites and their interaction with those who came to them fell outside formal control of the Church. As a result, religious authorities often viewed them with suspicion. One of the best known of these dropouts from ordinary social and religious norms was Julian of Norwich, a woman who had a near-death experience in 1373 and spent the rest of her life thinking about what it meant, for herself and for the world at large. The book she wrote about her revelation, the first in English that we know for sure was written in by a woman, is an astonishingly daring and original rethinking of Christian theology: a vision of a God in whom there is no wrath, who is both Father and Mother of Creation, and who will somehow, by a miracle beyond our ability to grasp, eventually effect the salvation of every living being.

Men and women of spirit who fell between the cracks, anchorites practiced what in its own way was a profoundly queer inner life, following the instincts of their own experience, flying under the radar of the powers that claimed to control access to the Divine.